How is it the middle of January already?!?
It is 8:30pm, I’m drinking coffee and baking. Does tell you my state of mind?
It’s more like the state of my body, I guess. I’m grateful for the job I currently have on days like this! I don’t clock in and out but still am available during normal working hours. But tomorrow evening when I’m trying to get my rhythm closer to ‘normal’ I can catch up on things that I won’t mentally be apt to during the day. We had a three-day weekend, and I haven’t caught my rhythm since the holidays. Happens all the time because most of the holidays are in Nov-Jan. Then none until May. This year I notice it more because it’s the first not being an hourly employee in a long time.
Baking orange-cranberry-oatmeal-white chocolate chip muffins, BTW. Thinking applesauce-cinnamon-oatmeal next, probably with the last of the cranberries and chips. I have a surplus of certain ingredients and I’m tired of throwing things away because I forget about them, and they go bad.
Y’all, can I be honest with you? The Christmas season was rough this year! I never caught ‘the spirit’ and it never ‘felt like’ Christmas. Ya know? 2 years ago, my dad passed away. Christmas was his favorite and he died on Dec 26. That was 2019. We had his memorial in February of 2020, and I went to Africa early in March. Then pandemic. I recap all of that to explain how things haven’t been ‘normal’ in a long time. We’ve all experienced that lack of normal over the last 20+ months.
‘They’ say part of the grieving process is discovering your new normals. Well… very few normals are normal anymore. It’s difficult to establish new traditions when things and protocols keep changing. I can’t say we’ve done things all that different as a family the past 2 years as far as the actual family dinner on Christmas Eve, but everything around it seems off. Shopping, decorating, plays, movies, looking at lights…
Life, right? Constant series of changes that feel like constant seasons of grief.
But
God
We are created by God for eternity. Through Jesus that eternity can be spent with Him in Heaven. Knowing that brings hope. This place, this world, this body, and these grief periods are temporary and minuscule in light of that hope. It doesn’t take the immediate pain away. It doesn’t make us not mourn or not hurt or not sob. It makes me yearn for that vail to be lifted and to step into that other side.
I think I’ve said something like that in an earlier post. Either way, I don’t mean it in a suicidal sense. But when I take my eyes and my focus off myself and turn them to God, to Jesus, to Heaven, to Love, and to Hope, things here don’t seem quite as bad.
Yeah, I’m 99.99% sure I’ve written all that before in some way or another. I don’t go back and read past posts. I feel like through writing, I get a chance to get these thoughts out, and then I can move on. Well, not move on as in not still think the same or battle the same wars, but it helps me process the current moments.
Make sense?
Also, on the topic of ‘normals’: I think at times we rely on them far too much. I’m thinking in the terms of religion. I heard recently that we need to be careful that yesterday’s revivals don’t become tomorrow’s religion. Religion in the terms of rituals and rules. If we hold on too tightly to the way things are ‘supposed’ to happen, we can miss what good IS happening. When we think church has to be XYZ every time but God is doing JKL, we miss Him and church/religion/ritual becomes our idol. Don’t put Him in box, He doesn’t fit.
Those first muffins turned out fabulous! I’d share the recipe, but I don’t really follow them well enough. I make delicious things, but it can be hard to replicate them this way. Makes everything new and interesting though!
PS I’m trying Thrive Market so I can get some new and interesting ingredients sent to my home. Here’s a link to check them out! When you sign up, you get a huge discount and I could get stuff in return, so yay! click here: THRIVE MARKET
Bragging on the Lord 